Easier To Run
by hull1984
Summary: puzzle (v) 1. confuse because difficult to understand. 2. think hard about something difficult to understand. (n) a puzzling person or thing. (Oxford English Dictionary) Draco spends years trying to make sense of the puzzle that is Ron.


**A/N: **Written as a pinch hit for the 2010 Ficadron on livejournal. My prompt was 'puzzle'. Written as 10 drabbles of 100 words each.

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Easier To Run

_The secret I've kept locked away no one will ever see_

1.

When he first sees Ron Weasley, he is eleven years old. It is their first day at Hogwarts School of Wizardry.

Draco's heard of him, of course. Or rather, not _him _exactly, but he's heard his father ranting about the whole Weasley family.

When he looks at the small boy in tatty robes and worn shoes, somehow managing to look even smaller and tattier than he actually is, he understands.

Some things need no further explanation.

What does confound him, though, is why Harry Potter chooses to be friends with the sad, little guttersnipe?

When it should have been him.

2.

It becomes an obsession after that. A desperate need to _know_. Why else would he have to watch the other boy so closely? Why would he feel this compulsion, this need to take him apart and put him back together again, just to see what lies inside?

Draco needs an answer. An answer to the puzzle that is Ron Weasley.

So he watches. And listens. And learns.

And with the watching and the listening and the learning, inevitably he becomes educated.

Of course, with knowledge comes change.

A new perspective, if you will.

But, before all that, there is envy.

3.

He is awash with friends.

And yet, has nothing with which to purchase such.

Nothing, but the brightness of hair, of eyes and laughter. A mad sort of love affair with life. (Next to Weasley the brightest of galleons appear tarnished and dull).

Draco doesn't understand. His money (his _father's_ money) had never bought such a wealth of friendship, of love.

He hates him for it. Hates him for how easily love finds him, seeks out his flame like a moth.

Hates until he sees. Sees that the boy is blind. Blind to all that he holds in his hands.

4.

For a time he wallows in the red head's ignorance. Happy to watch him flounder, to lose himself in his insecurity. (Shutting out his own emptiness, the numbness in his own life).

He mocks and teases. _Weasley is our king_. And takes vicious delight in the downcast eyes and clenched fists.

Potter, Granger, all of them unseeing, oblivious to his doubting. But not Draco.

Look at me, he thinks. Look at _me_, Weasley.

Sometimes, it doesn't even feel like hate.

He watches Weasley stumble in the dark. Disbelieving, almost angry, but always gloating.

Dreading the day that he finally _sees_.

5.

Some things come as no surprise.

He wears hand-me-down clothes, and an air of poverty and want clings to him like a worn cloak.

There's a stench of _never had_ that catches in his throat whenever Weasley's close (strong, but never strong enough to drown that other smell of autumn leaves and something sweet).

The red flag of his hair is no impostor either.

His temper is wild and furious, a glorious thing to torment and taunt (and Draco, ever the boy who poked with pointed sticks, just for the joy of watching the cat turn to claw and spit).

6.

Somewhere around sixteen he knows. Not all, but enough. He's fairly sure, if he took an Owl in Ron Weasley, he'd get a pass (possibly an Outstanding).

Still, _now _he understands Potter's choice.

He knows other things too.

He knows he'll never be a Death Eater, that he's not a murderer; he cannot kill and won't live to see seventeen.

But mostly, Draco knows he can't _have_.

And he's a coward. The only brave thing he's ever done, is done out of fear, and anger and jealousy. Just to prove.

To prove his worth to a boy who doesn't know.

7.

Weasley is brave. From the start. It's written in every line of his body and the tilt of his head.

Draco doesn't need inquisitors, Death Eaters and half-blood princes to know that.

It's there in the way he kisses. First, in the dark of an empty classroom (with a quiet, hushed, _I see you_, _I've always seen you_).

In every piece of white skin revealed for lips and teeth to bruise black.

With every soft sweep of fingers, every knowing caress.

In honest whispered words, breathed into a pale collarbone.

It's there in his footsteps as he walks away.

8.

In the quiet lonely nights, there are tears of anger, of regret. A hand, a word, would have made the difference.

Years of _I don't want_, _I don't want_.

Played out against fleeting moments of surrender, to all his best kept secrets, the sweetest of longed for moments finally allowed to burn through to his finger tips.

Somewhere in the midst of his fog, his coma, Draco marries and fathers a child.

But it's not enough.

On a train, somewhere in the past, he opened a puzzle box, and swore he wouldn't close it until he had all the answers.

9.

He blinks and twenty years have gone by. (Draco almost thinks he must have dreamed them).

And still he waits (two decades just _aren't_ enough). Waits for a boy who refused to wait, to finally grow impatient.

He's staring at a picture waiting for all the shattered pieces to form an answer. Waiting for that perfect moment when it all makes sense.

But nothing's perfect.

And he's held the answer to Ron Weasley for far too long now.

The boy, the man, no longer a puzzle.

But rather something familiar. Perhaps even the one thing in this world he _knows_.

10.

He's waiting by the stairs.

And suddenly they're seventeen again. The pictures moving in his head for all these years, finally still, and fade, to be replaced by _him_.

It should be awkward. There should be more shouting or less, cold vengeful silence or screamed accusations. It _should_ be a boy with fiery hair and fists to match.

But _should be_ and Ron Weasley had never really been close companions.

It shouldn't be this. Shouldn't be strong hands, gentled, forgiving. A quietly whispered _at last_.

It _shouldn't_ be.

But it is.

And in the end the answer was simple.

_Yes_.


End file.
